have next to no ammunition! Yet he does not blame Ross, who was really responsible. 'I understood,' he wrote, 'that they would be furnished with ammunition, but, since we sailed, find that they were only supplied with what was necessary for immediate service while in port; and we have neither musquet balls nor paper for musquet cartridges; nor have we any armourer's tools.' He begs his lordship to send out supplies of ammunition by the first ship, and also some women's clothing which was left behind and for want of which 'we shall be much distressed.' In another letter from the same place he says:—
'In general the convicts have behaved well. I saw them all yesterday for the first time' (since leaving England). 'They are quiet and contented, tho' there are amongst them some compleat villains.' And no musket balls ! Some months to be passed yet at sea, the new country peopled by strange blacks; the new colonists, for the greater part, more to be guarded against than these savages, and the garrison of 200 marines without cartridges! Well was it for the safety of the expedition that the convicts did not know of Ross's carelessness.
One incident happened at Santa Cruz, tragical enough, of the kind some of us remember at the old Surrey Theatre. A convict escaped and got into a boat lying astern of one of the transports. His flight was soon discovered; and then began a man hunt which lasted a whole day. By-and-by the
